


Earthly Delights

by templeremus



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love, Femslash, Food, Healing, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internal Conflict, Love, POV Queer Character, Prequel, Spoilers for Episode: s06e07 A Good Man Goes to War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeremus/pseuds/templeremus
Summary: Jenny learns how to keep the best and most lovely kind of secrets. Prequel, set prior to the events of 'A Good Man Goes To War'.
Relationships: Jenny Flint/Madame Vastra
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	Earthly Delights

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt challenge at who-contest. The prompt word was 'food'.

The pantry wasn't much to look at. Tucked away at the rear of the house, the windows high up and awkwardly positioned, it had a cobwebbed, untended character. The gloom reminded Jenny of the cupboard where she would hide, during one (or both) or her parents' rages. There was a burlap sack, stained and bulging with something unspeakable, on the lower shelf. 

She could have been forgiven for leaving it as it was. But Jenny had come to Paternoster Row with a mission - to keep the property secure - and security, to her mind, meant order.

She fetched the largest of the heavy brooms and swept out every corner. The burlap sack went up on a hook that Jenny fixed to the door. As the days and weeks went by, her mistress reciprocated. Jars filled the nooks once occupied by spiders. Mismatched bowls lined up on the bottom rung of shelves, each one containing a different purchase. Jenny would dip in a teaspoon, sometimes, or take a pinch between finger and thumb, like a monarch's taster at a banquet. She passed ten minutes, once, drinking in the sound of rice hitting its container. The preserves glowed - soft, as embers do - when she held them up to read the labels. 

At first these things were done guiltily, her throat constricting with the old, old fear of discovery. Later, when she understood herself and Madame Vastra a little better, Jenny made her explorations part of the cleaning ritual. She even left the door off the latch, so that the noises of the house - the tick of the clock in the hallway, the rattle of passing carriages as they shook the front window-frames - could drift through.

"Is there enough?" her mistress would ask her, perhaps two or three times a week. Jenny would drop a curtsey - awkward, almost stumbling, she had not yet mastered the artifice of it - and reply: "Plenty, ma'am."

Other courtships played out by letter. Theirs unfolded in private rooms. The jars were love notes composed in a variety of colours. The paper bags carrying fresh food were gifts, offered without judgment or obligation. Jenny accepted each one, with the hunger of a child who had never known such generosity. On shopping expeditions out of the house she would hold the basket tight, while her face assumed the blank meekness expected of someone in uniform. 

Back inside, she kept the pretence up for as long as it took to reorganise their supplies. Empty jars were washed out and placed on the top shelf, against the windowsill. On bright mornings, their refracted light seemed to lift the room.

"Enough?" Vastra asked. They were conversing in fragments now: a lovers' shorthand. Jenny let herself step back, at the same time as Vastra stepped forward. Their bodies - the one warm and neatly starched, the other firm and clad in loose-hanging black - took on a little of each other's shape. Though their clothes were chosen for the outside world, inside they wore them in recognition of what they shared: air, breath, secrets, selves.

"Enough," said the woman to her mistress.

  
  



End file.
